The solar system, of which our earth is a part, has as its
center the sun around which nine planets revolve in roughly circular orbits which lie
fairly close to the same plane. Associated with the planets are a total

1. The sun accounts for almost 99.9 percent of the mass of
the solar system, yet about 98 percent of the rotational momentum of the system is in the
planets.6 There is no know mechanical process which could accomplinsh this
transfer of momentum from the sun to the planets. Therefore, astronomers have developed a
scheme in which magnetic lines of force attached to the rotating sun dragged the condesing
clouds of dust and gas around and transferred angular momentum to them from the sun. Some
suggest that somehow this type of process transferred a large part of the sun's angular
momentum entirely out of the Solar System. Others avoid the angular momentum problem by
beginning their theorizing at a time after it has been cleared up by some unknown process.
And still others remain critical of all current proposals, continuing to hope for
something better.

An exceedingly delicate balance of conditions must be
assumed to make the scheme seem plausible even in theory. The assumed temperature of the
gas cloud must be sufficiently high to ionize the gas partly and thus provide for
interaction between the matter and the magnetic lines of force. On the other hand the
temperature must be sufficiently low to permit condensation of the material to form
planets. These requirements are apparently contradictory. On the other hand, this process
would require the sun to have a larger magnetic field than it now does, but there is no
way to prove that it ever did. Some suggest that somehow this type of process tranferred
much angular momentum entirely out of the Solar System. In view of the many unsettled
issues and the numerous disagreements between leadisng authorities, perhaps one is
justified asking, "Why not creation?"

A review of the results of the April 1972 Nice Symposium
on the Origin of the Solar System concluded: "The Symposium has also served in
delineating the areas of our ignorance, in particular in relation with the hydrodynamics
of the nebula and with physico-chemistry of the 'sticking process.'"7 The
"hydrodymanics of the nebula" involves the angular momentum problem which we
have been discussing. Thus, though secular scientists believe a gas-dust cloud collapsed
in the distant past to form the Solar System, they cannot bring together adequate
theoretical explanatins sof how the process could have occurred. Needless to say, the
hypothetical process cannot be demonstrated experimentally.

2. It seems that most of the solid dust particles in the
early nebula would be composed of silicates. But laboratory experiments show that when
particles of silicates collide they do not tend to stick together. However, it is
speculated that the solid particles were made sticky by adsorbed gases or ices. Then,
supposedly, chunks the size of golf balls could have formed, but there is no way to
explain how the golf balls clumped together to form planets. This is all comprehended in
the problem of the "sticking process" referred to in the previous quotation from
the Nice Symposium review.. On this subject one of the symposium participants said,
"We enter here into one of the most obscure chapters of our book."8 Another
complained, "They have not given a plausible account of any process by which golf
balls might be caused to produce an asteroid."9 Still another observed, "This symposium showed that we know
next to nothing about the formation process of the solar nebula and its early
evolution."10 But perhaps the sticking process is irrelevant, at least for the
inner planets. The reason is that the sun's "Roche limit" extends to the orbit
of the planet Jupiter, which means that out to that distance the gravitational action of
the sun would disrupt the tenuous clouds of gas and dust which supposedly were
proto-planets.11 As an example of this effect, the rings of Saturn will never
coalesce to form satellites, for they are inside of Saturn's Roche limit.

3. No theory of the formation of the earth-moon system has
yet succeeded in correlating all of the observed facts with the requirements of the laws
of physics. The three principal theories are the formation of the moon by fission from the
earth, capture of the moon by the earth, and accretion of the moon and earth together at
the same time from a common cloud of gas and particles in the solar nebula.

a. The fission theory pictures the rotating earth speeding
up as its heavier materials gravitated to its center. When the earth day had shortened to
2.6 hours the earth became unstable and spun offg the moon which then went into orbit
about the earth. The problems with this theory are immense.12 In the first place, if the
earth were originally homogeneous and the denser materials such as iron gravitated to the
center as is presently considered to be the case, this would have increased the rate of
spin by only about 13 percent. Thus the earth had to form with an initial rotation period
of only 3 hours. This is so close to the spin rate for break-up that it is hard to see how
the material could have stayed together to form the planet to begin with. Furthermore,
oncse the moon had been spun off into an orbit, slowing down the earth by tidal friction.
Two mnore difficulties arise at this point in the theory. The most serious is that half of
the rotational momentum of the original spinning earth would have to be dissipated in some
way, but no way is known for this to happen. Second, enough frictional energy would be
released in the earth to heat its entire mass 1000° C. There is no evidence this ever
happened. Finally, it is very probable that any moon spun off by rotation would simply
crash back into the earth. The fission theory is really scientifically dead.

b. All capture theories suffer from the lack of a
mechanism for slowing down the inbound visitor and disposing of the excess energy. Tidal
friction in the earth could account for only a tiny part of this energy in the first pass,
so the candidate moon would almost certainly not return for a second pass. One form of the
theory requires the moon to approach earth at just the right (improbably slow) velocity
and within two earth radii. But this is inside the Roche limit (2.89 earth radii), so
earth's gravitational force would probably break up the incoming moon. Another problem is
that the moon's present orbit to have begun by a process of chance capture.13

c. The most popular scenarios now have the moon forming
together with the earth by condensation. of a cloud of gas and particles. It must be
assumed, of course, that planets and moon can, indeed, form by such condensation. But in
addition, this theory requires a delicate balance of the rate of growth and distance
between the proto-moon and the proto-earth as they are growing, and also a gradual
increase in the rate of rotation of the embryo moon. Nobody can prove that it could
actually happen or did happen. Finally, there are distinct differences in density,
composition and mineralogy of the earth and moon which seem to disagree with the idea of
condensation from a common source cloud. For example, the moon is short of both metallic
iron and volatile elements, and the moon rocks are very high in uranium compared with the
earth.14

4. Although the nine planets and most of the satellites
orbit around their parent bodies in the counterclockwise direction (viewed from the north
polar direction), nevertheless eleven of the thirty-four satellites revolve in the
opposite direction. All theories designed to explain these irregularities and the
formation or capture of satellites have failed.

5. Although six of the planets rotate on their axes in the
counter-clockwise direction, three of the nine--Mercury, Venus, and Uranus--rotate in the
other direction. Furthermore, the axis of rotation of the planet Uranus lies almost in the
plane of its orbit rather than roughly at right angles, as in the cases of the other
planets. Theorists are hard put to explain these deviations from the pattern by means of
any evolutionary scheme.

6. The idea that the sun could be formed by the
gravitational collapse of a cloud of gas involves many theoretical difficulties. A gas
cloud of the type presently observed out in space, unless sit were a number of times
greater in mass than the sun, would tend to expand rather than contract. Just how massive
it would have to be has long been disputed by cosmogonists.15 Furthermore, the cloud could
not contract unless there were some way in which much of the resulting heat could be
radiated out of the cloud. Some have questioned whether a process exists that could get
this heat out of the cloud. When the cloud is reduced to approximately the volume of the
present solar system, much of the nebula around the newly forming sun must be somehow
blown out of the system, yet it is not clear how this house-cleaning occurred.

7. About twenty years ago a new mystery for
astrophysicists arose from the fact that painstaking measurements failed to detect the
predicted flow of neutrinos from the core of the sun. The nuclear fusion reaction which is
believed to power the sun and other stars produces neutrinos, and all these years repeated
efforts to detect them have indicated only a small fraction of the number required by
theory. This serious problem is still unsolved in early 1992.

The failure to detect the neutrinos required by stellar
theory and nuclear physics has led to speculation about possible explanations. Suggestions
include the following: (1) nuclear reactions do not power the sun, (2) the nuclear
reactions responsible are not yet fully understood, (3) neutrinos change character as they
travel through space, and (4) periodic surges of nuclear activity produce the sun's energy
and the neutrinos in spurts every million years or so, with slow diffusion of the energy
to the surface. The first explanation leaves only gravitational collapse to power the sun,
but this means that the sun could not be billions or millions of years old, and
secularists can't swallow that, for it would preclude the possibility of evolution. It
would be a neat solution for creationists, but since the temperature and pressure at the
sun's center make it seemingly impossible that nuclear fusion is not occurring at a rapid
rate, the proposed solution itself has serious difficulties. The second explanation is
certainly a possibility, but an unpleasant one for the secularists to contemplate. The
third explanation, changeable neutrinos, has been studied intensively but does not yet
appear to be acceptable. The fourth explanation, that of surges of energy production in
the sun's core, also has its problems. First, it does seem unlikely that the sun could
appear to radiate with a relatively constant radiation of energy, even though the
production of energy is so extremely pulsed as the theory holds. Furthermore, the required
pulses of neutrinos have not been observed, and if they are separated by periods of
thousands or millions of years, it leaves scientists with a theory for which there has
been no observable evidence. All theoretical explanations offered to date are equally
unsatisfactory.16

8. Another review of the Nice Symposium referred to
earlier says: "Yet to be discussed adequately is the detailed fragmentation of the
massive cloud in which protostars are born. Also in question are the hydrodynamics and the
stability considerations of the protosun nebula. Most important, there remain to be
specified (and carried out!) the crucial experimental tests that can distinguish between
the available viable theories. It is particularly disappointing that we have almost no
useful information on the specific solid state processes at work in the accretion
phase."17 The reviewer goes onto quote seven fundamental questions posed by
H. Reeves, the editor of the Symposium report:

Do the sun and planets originate in the same interstellar
cloud?

If so, how was the planetary matter separated from the
solar gas?

How massive was the nebula?

How did the collapsing cloud cross the thermal, magnetic,
and angular momentum barriers?

What were the physical conditions in the nebula?

What was the mechanism of condensation and accretion?

How did the planets, with their present properties and
solar distances, form?

8. Another international symposium on the Origin of the
Solar System was held for two weeks at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1976, reported in Nature
by David W. Hughes.18 About half of his report deals with problems and disagreements
among the specialists. Six competing and generally contradictory scenarios for the
collapse of the hypothetical gas-dust cloud were proposed by different authorities. Hughes
concludes, "Diverse ideas and suggestions were put forward by many people but the
list of unanswered questions remains uncomfortably long...The remaining questions are
legion...Two weeks of stimulating mental activity was had by all."

The cause of all of this disagreement among astronomers
and cosmogonists is the fact that the processes they are discussing have never been
observed, and that they can in general not be reproduced experimentally. This is the
common problem with most evolutionary hypotheses, either cosmic or biological. Is natural
star formation possible and has it ever actually happened? The following comments by
leading authorities are instructive: "...the cold dust and gas of the interstellar
medium must be gathered into a blob or cloud of sufficient density to permit it to pull
itself together under the attraction of gravity...no suitable theoretical picture has yet
been proposed."19 "...If a protostar is an object into which mass is falling,
then it is doubtful whether we have ever observed one. Indeed, outflow is typical
of all the known spectra of young stars...the knotty problem of actually observing infall
remains controversial."20 "...If stars did not exist it would be easy to prove
that this is what we expect."21

It does seem clear that secularist scientists are acting
on faith when they insist that the solar system evolved from a nebular cloud.

9. The earth-sun system, which is to man the most
important segment of the solar system is beautifully and delicately balanced to provide an
environment on the earth's surface suitable for habitation by man. A number of the
provisions for man's welfare on earth are detailed in Chapter-1. The probability that all of these factors would be found
conjoined on the same planet is astronomically small. Our conclusion, supported not only
by faith, but also by a sober appraisal of the facts of the case, is that Earth came into
being as a result of intelligent, purposeful design and divine power.